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PINCH ME I’M DREAMING DARLING!

This is a total “pinch me I must be dreaming” post! Picture me furiously typing with excitment over sharing these photos with you. Because these are my creative babies that won first place in the HOTEL TONIGHT Photographer’s Competition!

What?! I never win anything (except maybe scrabble).

Myself and a number of blogger photographers were invited to spend a night at one of the iconic partnering hotels of Hotel Tonight. The competition challenge stipulated that our goal was to showcase the most unique elements of our hotel of choice.

After stalking many of the beautiful hotels on offer, I chose to stay at The Darling Hotel. Why? Because it is elegant, it is sexy and I knew it would boast design flare to get my creative juices flowing.

So without further ado I packed my bags and trotted off for a night of heaven at The Darling.

BUT WAIT! I forgot to tell you about the greatest challenge of this competition.

We photographers were not allowed to rely on our fancy digital cameras and editing programs. No, no, no… All photos submitted had to be taken on none other than our smart phones and could only be edited using the smart phone tools.

Challenge accepted!

I darted around the hotel madly snapping anything that caught my eye on my iPhone 6. There was so much inspiration to be gleaned from the interior design and the achitecture. After selecting a shortlist of my favourite shots I decided to capture the hotel’s sexiness by presenting them as a black and white series. I used the iPhone photo editing tools to remove the colour and adjusted the highlights and shadows to create more drama darling!

I hope you enjoy the fruits of my labour. I still can’t believe my photos took part in an exhibition and went on to win first place. As a creative, every now and then it’s nice to get a high five from someone who validates your work. It’s not the reason why we create but it’s rewarding to know you’re on to something worthwhile.

It’s insane what we can now achieve on phone cameras. I just used the editing tool that comes with the iPhone in iPhoto. They’re basic but sometimes it’s good to be limited. I really enjoyed the challenge! Thank you for your kind words! Gemma x